At the 2023 Cardano Summit in Dubai, the Fund 11 launch date was announced for November 15, 2023. You can start submitting proposals for the new round in less than 2 weeks. 50 million ada is allocated pay proposers, reviewers in many roles, and voters for their participation. The Catalyst team is committed to an ongoing pace of 3 funding rounds per year for the foreseeable future. It seems they are also committed to engaging actively in iterating on the experiment, as evidenced by the many changes being introduced for Fund 11.
Voting Mechanic
What Happened?
In previous funds, voters had three choices to make for each proposal: Upvote, Downvote, or Abstain. In theory, the downvote existed to enable voters to voice their express approval or disapproval of any proposal that they wanted to engage with. In practice, it became a social nightmare. For proposers, there was no way to get around the feeling that millions of ADA in downvotes on your idea feels personal. Additionally, downvotes served as a whipping boy, being blamed for many of the project’s pain points. For example, certain large projects and well-established groups won a lot of funding, while many newcomers and small projects did not. Certain analyses suggest that outcomes would in fact not have changed much on this point without the downvote. (In fact, they may have been even less equitable!) However, many people remained convinced that downvotes provided nothing but an unfair thumb on the scale.
What’s Next?
Ultimately, the important thing is that Project Catalyst is an experiment! Adjusting the variables in each round to find what works best is inherent to the project. For Fund 11, the voting variable is out on the dissection table and downvotes are being removed. Instead, voters can choose to vote YES, or Abstain. As always, voters earn rewards for participation in voting. Voting with the Abstain option “counts” as voting, just as much as the YES vote. As it was stated in the first Project Catalyst session at the Summit in Dubai, this new version of the voting mechanism will provide a “simpler decision making process for voters sincerely expressing their opinion.” We can’t wait to see how it plays out!
Number of Proposals
What Happened?
In the past, there has been no limit to the number of proposals an individual or group can submit. It has been relatively common, and generally accepted, that proposers may have multiple proposals in each fund. These proposals might be related to each other, or they might be totally different, independent ideas. There were, however, a few infamous cases of proposers submitting dozens of proposals within a single round. When this happened, the proposals were sometimes low-quality, strange, or copy-paste versions of one another. The community called out these proposers for their outlandish behavior, and they were duly punished at the polls with resounding downvotes. These situations were great fodder for the social media mill, but ultimately a distraction from the earnest work and intent of the experiment.
What’s Next?
In Fund 11, proposers are limited to 5 proposals. Both primary-proposer and co-proposer roles count toward this limit. If a proposer does submit more than this limit, only the most recent 5 will pass along to the ballot. This new limitation pulls in the reins on the circus show of dozens of proposals from a single team, which seems like a clear win. Less clear is the way that it limits the participation of co-proposers. In the past, including co-proposers from multiple teams was a way to build bridges and demonstrate the cooperative arrangements between community members. Teams and proposers will have to be more careful and strategic with their proposals to ensure that no individual is listed with more than their limit of proposals.
Cardano Use Cases
What Happened?
In the first ten funds, challenge “Campaigns” were the only way that proposers and projects were segmented. Some Campaigns included constraints such as budget limits, as a way to encourage smaller and newer proposers to participate, but these were the exception. In general, small projects and big ones, brand new ideas and established products all competed under the same umbrellas. As mentioned above, it has been observed that the bar seems to keep getting higher for newcomers to participate in Catalyst, and this lack of segmentation has been noted as a likely contributing factor.
What’s Next?
Fund 11 will have separate entry levels for Concept, Solution, and Product proposals:
- Concept proposals have to be a brand new idea, and are limited to a budget of 100K ada.
- Solution proposals must already have at least a proof of concept that reviewers and voters can see and evaluate. Solution projects are limited to 300K ada.
- Product proposals must have a product already in the market that can be used by reviewers and voters; for a proposal that promises exciting next steps for existing products, the budget is limited to 750K ada.
There is nothing that says that newcomers have to start at the Concept level, or that established teams can’t come into the concept level with a brand new idea. However the combinations of these segments, along with budget limits, seems like a great way to offer many more “slots” that are accessible to newcomers, and are a great way to ensure that Project Catalyst continues to bring in new crops of fresh ideas in each round.
But Wait There’s More!
These are just three of the changes lined up for Fund 11. There are a few more really good ones, but this author is worn out from an unforgettable weekend of work and play at the 2023 Summit in Dubai! Tune in next week to get up to date on all the changes before Fund 11 kicks off!
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